However, there is room and need for differentiating the rules applicable to different EOSC actors depending on their maturity and role and taking into consideration:

Specificities of different scientific disciplines

Diversity and level of readiness of infrastructures and services at discipline, Member States and EU level (research infrastructures, e-infrastructures) and the differences in their established rules and processes

Variety of service providers and users that will be involved in the EOSC (e.g. public vs private; horizontal vs specialised)

5 Actions to Launch the 1st EOSC Rules of Participation

There are 5 steps to produce the rules of participation. As of writing this on 13 August 2018, we were at Step 2 with Step 1 being covered in the EOSC Implementation Roadmap released earlier this year.

Scope the Rules of Participation, identifying the main topics that should be covered and setting out the key principles

Mandate the Governance framework to elaborate further the draft set of rules

Finalise and publicise the Rules of Participation

Foster and monitor uptake and compliance of (relevant) rules by the various EOSC stakeholders

These activities will be leveraging on the work of EOSCpilot, the EOSC High Level Expert Group, EOSC-hub, OpenAIRE, the European Commission's Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) and INFRA-EOSC-05(a) projects.

Post-Consultation: Adopting and Enforcing the Rules of Participation

After the initial recommendations on the rules of participation were drafted by the High Level Group for EOSC for scientific users and service providers in the EOSC and after the closure of the Open Consultation of stakeholders, which ran in the EOSCpilot's own portal, the next step is to analyse the responses.

The Executive Board proposes the final EOSC Rules of Participation to the EOSC Board for adoption.

The EOSC Board adopts the Rules of Participation and publishes and disseminates the final rules

The Governance framework fosters and monitors the uptake and compliance of the (relevant) RoP by the various EOSC stakeholders

Milestones and Timeline of EOSC Rules

Below is the expected timeline for the EOSC Rules of Participation. It is expected that a first set of rules would be available in the beginning of 2019 with the final set of rules being planned for the end of 2019.

Q2 2018: Scoping and guiding principles for the EOSC rules of participation and launch of the stakeholder consultation

Q3 2018: Draft the set of rules and consult stakeholders

Q4 2018: Mandate the Governance framework to elaborate further the draft

Q4 2019: Final EOSC rules based on the development of the federating core (e.g. shared resources, compliance and governance frameworks) Regular monitoring and annual reports on uptake of and compliance with EOSC rules

Q4 2019: Foster and monitor uptake and compliance

While voting on the proposed EOSC Rules of Participation is now closed, there's still time to contribute to the discussions in "forum" part of the Open Consultation. You can join the conversations or propose new topics to better cover all aspects of the Rules of Participation. Have your say and go to the Consultation Platform now!